CHIVALRY

New Zealand Times, Volume XLI, Issue 9246, 13 January 1916, Page 3

CHIVALRY

AN ANZAC INCIDENT FOES' MISSION OF MERCY. LONDON, November 26. An officer of the R.N.V.It. in Gallipoli writes:— Late one afternoon upon tho extreme right of our line a man was seen in the Turkish zone moving furtively through the scrub behind the Jseacb, and about lialf a mile distant, and making for the narrow gap which separates the end of our trenches from the blue waters of the Aegean Sea. From the tall summit of the Lonesome Pine Plateau tho Australian watchers looked on with interest, wondering what his purpose might be. Suddenly a rifle shot rang out—a Turkish rifle shot —and the man fell .rounded.

There he lay in the open beside the beach and bound up his wound and .tursed his pains, a pathetic figure—a piece of human wreckage cast up by the storm and wrath, not of God but of man.

On one side lay the army of his friends from which he was an outcast; on the other his foe. determined, chivalrous, hut not implacable; while beneath him murmured the OTiny of Allah —the heedless, careless sea. To which of those should he turn for help m his extremity? Surely to the forces >f neutral Nature. In the liquid depths of the broad Aegean his pains would find release —his mind peace! Slowly dragged himself, in spite of * shattered limb, towards' the waterside, while the red sun drooped above Imbros, that happy western isle whose dills seemed to cast their shadows ever aearer. A SOUL IN PAIN. :., Night fell, and in the faint starlight tha watchers upon Loneiome Pine looked at one another qUestioningly. Little they said, yet the same thought was uppermost in the mind of each. Something must be done. There was a call 'or volunteers, and a few minutes later a party of gallant men from the backblocks were threading their way along the shore through the darkness and silence, broken only by the music of waves and the cry of a soul in pain. They came upon the object of.their quest just at tho very margent of sand and sea,, and were raising him up, when through the shadow there loomed suddenly another band, a Turkish patrol, bent on the same quest. Shots were exchanged, and the newcomers, who found themselves at a disadvantage numerically, were at once sUpnlied with a wounded man from among themselves to take back to the Turkish camp in place of the one they had missed by a few minutes only, whilo the other party, both rescuers and rescued, had soon reached the Anzac linos fn safety. What led these men to hazard their lives' in so perilous an exploit, braving certain danger to save an unknown foe?

I believe the old Philosopher Epicte--tus once supplied the answer under somewhat similar circumstances. "They have done this," ho exclaimed, ''not for tho man, but for the nature of man."